This invention relates generally to farm equipment of a type for ground preparation and, more particularly, to a strip-till row apparatus for preparing the soil for the subsequent planting of seeds.
Strip tillage, or just strip-till, refers to a method or program of minimal tillage of the soil in which only the area corresponding to where the seed crop is to be planted is tilled. By contrast, conventional tillage involves tilling the entirety of the soil of a field rather than just the rows where see is to be planted. Frequently, a farm implement may include multiple individual “row units” that may be pulled across a ground surface by a tractor and which may condition the soil along the yet-to-be-planted rows to be ready to receive the seeds. Strip tillage may include means for breaking up the soil, such as with disks having teeth and then smoothing it out with the tines of a harrow,
Various strip-till row devices are known in the art for preparing soil for row crop planting. Although presumably effective for their intended purposes, the existing units are often not fully efficient and thorough in that portions of the strip-till device may be lifted off the ground or at least not maintained at a consistent depth as a result of uneven ground. In other words, the existing devices have no mechanism for pressing the tillage assembly downwardly while in use.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a strip-till row apparatus that includes an inflatable airbag configured to apply a selectable amount of downward pressure on a tillage assembly so as to maintain the tillage assembly in engaging the ground. Further, it would be desirable to have a strip-till row apparatus having a full complement of varied tillage components for sequentially conditioning the soil for planting.